Making do

When you can’t go out and they can’t come in, you make do. Beginning a few weeks ago, our clothes dryer was taking longer and longer to dry clothes, then over the weekend when I washed sheets and our quilt, it worked for 2 1/2 hours and still didn’t get it dry. Fortunately, I bought a huge drying rack from the Amish furniture store after we moved here. I thought that someday, I would get a clothes line up, but never did. The quilt was folded in half and draped over the rack to finish drying overnight. Knowing that the heating coil has likely failed, laundry is being done more often and in smaller loads and hung on the rack. Also some time in the past, I purchased another rack that hangs over the clothes dryer.

Someday, I will get the dryer repaired.

Along with the dryer failure, I ran out of dish soap. I am a soap maker, so a DIY moment and a bottle of liquid dishsoap was made this morning.

With the pandemic, and the stay at home orders, the panic buying and the changing suggestions, hand sanitizer and masks are impossible items. I grow aloe and still had a bottle of Isopropyl alcohol, so two small bottles of hand sanitizer were made. First we were told not to wear masks, now the recommendation is to wear one if you have to be out as they now believe that the virus can be spread even by breath. I had some cotton fabric that I had purchased for lining a woven bag and had entirely too much. A quick search online provided patterns for DIY masks.

Though we aren’t going out, if it becomes necessary, at least we will have a mask. Two layers of the cotton with a layer of a bandana in the middle and we have 3 layer masks.

Make do when you need to.

2 thoughts on “Making do”

  1. Good for you, Fran! Glad you had wooden driers. They are always nice to dry clothes and fiber on. I had to go for bloodwork today in Kingsport, and the chemo center nurse gave me two masks. They screened by temperature before we could go into the waiting room. Patients were seated 6 feet apart and everyone wore masks and used hand sanitizer from containers on the wall. I like the masks you made!

    1. Thanks. It was such a neutral cotton and the bandanna wasn’t ever going to be used. The difficulty is glasses and hearing aid with the elastic. I may make me a tie on one.

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